Chapter 8
The dining room table was buried beneath a chaotic sprawl of yellowed paper folders, financial ledgers, and printed property deeds. Clara sat at the head of the table, her laptop open, cross-referencing names and corporate entities that David and Eleanor had dragged out of the attic boxes. The morning light had given way to a grey, overcast afternoon, mirroring the heavy mood inside the house.
David stood by the window, peering through the blinds toward the quiet street outside. Every passing car made his shoulders tense, a living monument to chronic anxiety.
“Here,” Clara said, tapping her finger against the laptop trackpad. “Look at this corporate filing from nineteen-ninety-eight. Vance’s company didn’t just lose a patent; they were systematically stripped of their primary assets through a shell corporation registered in the Cayman Islands. And look at the signature on the dissolution papers.”
David walked over slowly, leaning down to peer at the screen. His breath hitched. The signature at the bottom of the document was clear and undeniable.
“My father,” David whispered, the color draining from his face. “He signed it.”
“He didn’t just sign it, David,” Eleanor said quietly from her seat across the table. She reached out and touched the edge of the paper. “Your father bought out Vance’s investors behind his back, forcing a bankruptcy that ruined him legally. Vance blamed him until the day he died. And now, his son—Marcus Vance Junior—has inherited that grudge.”
“Junior?” David straightened up, frowning. “The Marcus Vance I knew was older, retired—”
“The father passed away two years ago,” Eleanor explained calmly. “The son took over the estate, inherited the old legal files, and picked up where his father left off. He isn’t just a disgruntled former partner; he’s a litigious bulldog with millions of dollars and nothing to lose.”
Clara’s phone buzzed sharply on the wooden table, the vibration sounding like a rattlesnake in the quiet room. Both men jumped. Clara looked down at the screen. An unknown number had sent a single multimedia message.
May you like
With trembling fingers, Clara tapped the notification. An image loaded slowly. It was a high-resolution photograph taken from across the street, looking directly through their living room window. In the center of the frame, David and Eleanor were clearly visible standing by the dining table.
Below the photo was a single text message: “Nice family reunion. But you left the front door unlocked.”
